...not your average horror movie, but, then, Kubrick was not your average movie director.
"The Shining" is not your average horror movie, but, then, Kubrick was not your average movie director. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "To be great is to be misunderstood," in which case I think it's clear that Kubrick was, indeed, great.
Video:
I was not entirely happy with either of WB's first two DVD releases of this movie, so I was a little apprehensive about this new HD DVD issue. I shouldn't have been. It is quite good, almost as good as the original print, I'm sure. Using a digitally remastered edition, a VC-1 encode, and 1080 lines of resolution, the video engineers come up with a quality product. Gone are the occasional age spots, the fades, and the grain, replaced by bright, deep colors, strong black levels, and an extraordinarily clean image. Gone, too, is the full-screen aspect ratio of the original camera negative that Kubrick requested before he died, replaced by the film's American theatrical ratio of 1.85:1. The overall focus is slightly soft, but it is probably what Kubrick wanted and about what I remember from the movie house.
Audio:
The HD DVD provides an English soundtrack in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1. The TrueHD sounds to me a tad fuller, but neither track offers much in the way of surround sound. That's OK, though, given that there is little in the movie beyond music and dialogue to reproduce, anyway. The audio does a good job rendering all the atmospheric music that Kubrick chose to accompany the story--Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta," for instance, and selections from Wendy Carlos, Gyorgy Ligeti, and Krzysztof Penderecki. Since many of the excerpts Kubrick used he took from commercially available stereo recordings (the Bartok is a von Karajan DG performance, for example), one can understand that the sonic impression may not be as spectacular as one would get from, say, a new action movie; yet the sound is wide ranging and fairly quiet and does its job with a minimum of fuss.
Extras:
The first major extra is an audio commentary with Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown and Kubrick biographer John Baxter. Kubrick brought Brown in especially for the film, and his and Baxter's insights are illuminating. Then there are three featurettes and documentary, all in standard definition. The featurettes are "View from the Overlook: Crafting The Shining," thirty minutes, with filmmakers, writers, and critics weighing in on the film; "The Visions of Stanley Kubrick," a seventeen-minute continuation of the previous featurette, with people like Jack Nicholson, Sidney Pollack, Hugh Hudson, William Friedkin, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas all having a go at Kubrick; and "Wendy Carlos, Composer," a seven-minute session with the movie's musical director reflecting on the music. The last major item on the disc is the documentary "The Making of The Shining" by the director's daughter, Vivian Kubrick, who was seventeen at the time she filmed it. It's a behind-the-scenes affair, about thirty-five minutes long, shot much like a home movie during the feature film's production, containing interviews with cast and crew, and providing a good deal of inside information. You can choose to watch it with or without Ms. Kubrick's later commentary.
Things wrap up with forty scene selections but no chapter insert; a widescreen theatrical trailer; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired. As always with a Warner Bros. HD DVD, there are also pop-up menus, bookmarks, a guide to elapsed time, a zoom-and-pan feature, and an Elite Red HD case.
Parting Thoughts:
Back to "The Shining": Supposedly, Stephen King hated Kubrick's interpretation of his book so much that in 1997 he wrote his own screenplay for a television miniseries. The result was a long, tedious, non-frightening experience that only proved how taut and well constructed Kubrick's treatment was. "The Shining" is a damn fine scary film, made all the better in this new HD DVD release.
Warner Bros. have made "The Shining" available in HD DVD, Blu-ray, and standard-definition. All three formats are available separately, and the SD versions are also available in the big "Stanley Kubrick Director's Series" box, which includes "2001: A Space Odyssey," "A Clockwork Orange," "The Shining," "Full Metal Jacket," "Eyes Wide Shut," and the documentary "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures." Most of the films in SD come in two-disc special editions, with the exception of the single-disc "Full Metal Jacket" and the Kubrick documentary.
Oh, and remember, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play....."
Video:
I was not entirely happy with either of WB's first two DVD releases of this movie, so I was a little apprehensive about this new HD DVD issue. I shouldn't have been. It is quite good, almost as good as the original print, I'm sure. Using a digitally remastered edition, a VC-1 encode, and 1080 lines of resolution, the video engineers come up with a quality product. Gone are the occasional age spots, the fades, and the grain, replaced by bright, deep colors, strong black levels, and an extraordinarily clean image. Gone, too, is the full-screen aspect ratio of the original camera negative that Kubrick requested before he died, replaced by the film's American theatrical ratio of 1.85:1. The overall focus is slightly soft, but it is probably what Kubrick wanted and about what I remember from the movie house.
Audio:
The HD DVD provides an English soundtrack in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1. The TrueHD sounds to me a tad fuller, but neither track offers much in the way of surround sound. That's OK, though, given that there is little in the movie beyond music and dialogue to reproduce, anyway. The audio does a good job rendering all the atmospheric music that Kubrick chose to accompany the story--Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta," for instance, and selections from Wendy Carlos, Gyorgy Ligeti, and Krzysztof Penderecki. Since many of the excerpts Kubrick used he took from commercially available stereo recordings (the Bartok is a von Karajan DG performance, for example), one can understand that the sonic impression may not be as spectacular as one would get from, say, a new action movie; yet the sound is wide ranging and fairly quiet and does its job with a minimum of fuss.
Extras:
The first major extra is an audio commentary with Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown and Kubrick biographer John Baxter. Kubrick brought Brown in especially for the film, and his and Baxter's insights are illuminating. Then there are three featurettes and documentary, all in standard definition. The featurettes are "View from the Overlook: Crafting The Shining," thirty minutes, with filmmakers, writers, and critics weighing in on the film; "The Visions of Stanley Kubrick," a seventeen-minute continuation of the previous featurette, with people like Jack Nicholson, Sidney Pollack, Hugh Hudson, William Friedkin, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas all having a go at Kubrick; and "Wendy Carlos, Composer," a seven-minute session with the movie's musical director reflecting on the music. The last major item on the disc is the documentary "The Making of The Shining" by the director's daughter, Vivian Kubrick, who was seventeen at the time she filmed it. It's a behind-the-scenes affair, about thirty-five minutes long, shot much like a home movie during the feature film's production, containing interviews with cast and crew, and providing a good deal of inside information. You can choose to watch it with or without Ms. Kubrick's later commentary.
Things wrap up with forty scene selections but no chapter insert; a widescreen theatrical trailer; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired. As always with a Warner Bros. HD DVD, there are also pop-up menus, bookmarks, a guide to elapsed time, a zoom-and-pan feature, and an Elite Red HD case.
Parting Thoughts:
Back to "The Shining": Supposedly, Stephen King hated Kubrick's interpretation of his book so much that in 1997 he wrote his own screenplay for a television miniseries. The result was a long, tedious, non-frightening experience that only proved how taut and well constructed Kubrick's treatment was. "The Shining" is a damn fine scary film, made all the better in this new HD DVD release.
Warner Bros. have made "The Shining" available in HD DVD, Blu-ray, and standard-definition. All three formats are available separately, and the SD versions are also available in the big "Stanley Kubrick Director's Series" box, which includes "2001: A Space Odyssey," "A Clockwork Orange," "The Shining," "Full Metal Jacket," "Eyes Wide Shut," and the documentary "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures." Most of the films in SD come in two-disc special editions, with the exception of the single-disc "Full Metal Jacket" and the Kubrick documentary.
Oh, and remember, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play....."
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]21830[/release]